I recently started paying attention to which paw Henrietta used. Why? Bored? Intrigued? Let’s go with intrigued and curious as to whether my poodle is left- or right pawed. I found, after somewhat careful observation that she appears to favor her left paw.

How did I come to my oh-so-scientific conclusion?

When I stop petting her she will scratch me with her left paw

When I get her dressed to go out, she always comes to my left side

When getting dressed, she always lifts her left paw first to be put into her pajamas

When she sleeps she sleeps on her left side

When she sits on my lap she leans on me with her left side

More importantly in my scientific study… when she loses a treat under a chair or her food dish, she digs with her left paw

After I determined that I went searching online to see if “pawedness” had any personality trait correlations and I discovered they did.

Left-pawed dogs are more aggressive with strangers than right-pawed dogs. Henrietta isn’t aggressive to humans, but doesn’t really care for the attention of anyone outside of the family. She is definitely more aggressive with dogs bigger than she is, but that could be because she likes to rule the roost. It could also be because I allow her to rule the roost.

A video I found showed that left-pawed dogs are more trainable than right-pawed dogs. I am not certain if that’s true and I am not here to disparage any right-pawed dogs, but I do know that Henrietta is uber-easy to train to do both helpful and non-helpful tricks. She will fetch her stuffed toys and knows them by name. She will also sneeze when I say, “bless you.” She will stretch her bones on command — she does a great downward facing dog.

Can you tell I love my poodle and have far too much time on my hands on a snowy day? If you thought that you’re right. Do I care? Nope.

OK, so now this is going to be my Saturday morning activity! I have never noticed whether Ruby favors her right or left paw – though she certainly is suspicious of strangers. My daughter is left-handed (both my husband and I are right-handed) so it certainly would be fun if Ruby (who my daughter considers to be her sister) is also left-pawed. I will keep you posted!